Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/340

324 incapable of using that energy and skill necessary to rebuild the waste places left by the war. Many writers in leading books of reference, showed a lack of knowledge and an untruthfulness as to facts that make it necessary to present proof. To show the falsity of their record, the last Encyclopedia Brittanica, for instance, says: "Since the revolutionary days, the few thinkers of America born south of Mason and Dixon's line are out-numbered by those belonging to the single State of Massachusetts; nor is it too much to say, that mainly by their connection with the North, the Carolinas have been saved from sinking to the level of Mexico and the Antilles. "No country has been so persistently falsified in history as the South has been; hers has been to make history, unfortunately, not to write it. Dr. J. L. M. Curry says: "History, poetry, art, public opinion have been most unjust to the South. By perverse reiterations its annals, its acts, its inner feelings, its purposes have been grossly misrepresented. History, as written, if accepted, in future years will consign the South to infamy."

In connection with this section or article, other articles will show that the people of the South were abreast with the people of any other section of the republic in fighting its battles, in commanding its armies, in protecting the national honor, in adding to the territory of the Union, in leading in judicial, political, and social development, in fact in all branches calling for the exercise of a progressive and aggressive citizenship, in aiding and taking part in the growth of our common country.

The manhood of the South has been equal to any emergency, political, judicial, material or social. I will treat only of the capacity for material and industrial growth by the Southern people, to show that there was no difference in these particulars in the decade from 1850 to 1860, preceding the war, from that developed in the decade 1880 to 1890 and afterward; that they were able to do